H1N1 Flu Shot Fun

When I saw that there were free H1N1 flu shots available, I called my daughter’s pediatrician’s office to see if she should take advantage of the Albany County Health Department’s offer. The answer was a resounding “Yes”, since 1) the office still had neither H1N1 or seasonal flu vaccine and 2) it was particularly suggested because of her asthma.

So I went online, registered for a 3 pm slot at the TU Center – 3 pm, 3:30 pm, and 4 pm were all that were left at the time, and the second venue, at the Berne-Knox-Westerlo school was totally full.

Now comes the tricky part: when to tell the five-and-a-half year old. I had talked to other parents who told their kids a week ahead of time and the child fretted for the whole seven days.

So I decided to wait until Sunday, after church. I also frankly didn’t know of it was going to be an inoculation or the stuff in the nose, though a shot of an apprehensive kid on Capital News 9 made me think it was the former.

She and I took the bus downtown, since I feared large crowds and difficult parking. Actually, it was all quite orderly, even on South Pearl Street. She LOVES taking the escalators, and these were long ones.

Inside, there were two sets of registration tables, each with three folks broken down alphabetically. At the moment we came, only A-G was occupied at both tables. in fact, the people in front of us were named Greene, we discovered. It was like an adventure.

Filling out the forms ahead of time helped a lot. I’m fascinated by the fact that the form only required information about the mother but not the father; I noticed this also when the child was born. This may reflect a reality, but it’s still peculiar.

When we got to the final table, and the idea of getting the shot became real…well, it was a bit of a struggle, let’s say.

Afterward, however, we peeked inside the arena and got to see 10 guys with a long hose, one holding some contraption with about a dozen nozzles, laying the ice on the floor, first going counterclockwise on the perimeter, then clockwise further inside, until the floor was covered.

The daughter now wants to go to a hockey game. Does she know what hockey is? Apparently so. Guess we’ll be seeing the River Rats someday.

Unfortunately, I lost a book of my daughter’s, about a temporary fairy named Alice. I must have sat that book and another on the information table just past the inoculation section. We had to go all the way around the arena to get back to the table – we weren’t allowed to backtrack – and by the time we arrived, one book was there, but the other book was gone. Bummer.

Another bummer is that she’ll have to get another shot in 28 days or so, which I have already told her about. So, of course, she got ice cream for dessert that night. And so did I.

We did exactly the same thing that day with our 6 year old son, didn’t really tell him until he saw the needle coming for him. It took two of us to hold him down and he was unbearable the rest of the day.